The 4th of July -- a day upon which Americans assert their
independence from, apparently, common sense.

The big thing about the 4th is fireworks. I'm sitting at home in my
apartment, I hear a series of sharp cracking noises, and I think to
myself, is that gunfire? Nope, it's firecrackers.

There's a several-day period leading up to the 4th, where people
gradually set off more and more explosives, culminating in the 4th
itself.

And on the 4th, there are a bunch of professional fireworks displays,
put on by radio stations, etc. We go to one of these. It's to be on
ground between a couple of casinos, near North Las Vegas airport (a
small field that doesn't carry any commercial airline traffic). We drive
past vacant lots that are full of parked cars, people sitting in or near
them, waiting for the show.

And in a sane country, that's all they'd be doing. But this is
America, so they're all setting off explosives.

There are two ways to buy fireworks: you can go to one of the
fireworks stands around town, which sell fairly small fireworks. None
of these are mortars or rockets, so they don't actually fly; but you
can get fountains that shoot sparks and flame a metre or so in the
air, spinning top fireworks, sparklers, etc. These are the fireworks
that are regarded as "safe", but that's a relative term. In those lots
full of cars, people, and dry desert scrub, we see people setting off
these fireworks right next to their cars. With no thought as to wind
direction. Common sense is evidently in short supply.

And then there's the other way to buy fireworks. This generally
involves driving to a county with laxer laws; or to an indian
reservation, which seem to be exempt from a whole bunch of laws.
There, you buy the really dangerous fireworks: the kind that fly, the
kind that go boom, the kind that set fire to your neighbour's roof. It
helps that your neighbour's roof is usually made of wood shingles,
tinder-dry after years in the desert sun. It also helps that these
fireworks are not particularly designed to be bought, transported,
stored, assembled and detonated by idiots. There are two sounds of
the 4th of July: the sound of fireworks, and the sound of fire truck
sirens.

North Las Vegas airport is, of course, flat; so the area where the
fireworks are to be set off is visible from all the way around it. We
drive around looking for a good spot. We don't find any particularly
good spots, but we do drive past many cop cars, who are there for
traffic management; several fire brigade units, waiting for the
inevitable; and some idiots launching mortar fireworks into the flight
path. Par for the course, really.

We wait for dark, and for the fireworks display to begin. It's pretty
hard to tell when it starts: every few minutes a large shell
that someone has bought and launched illegally will go off, and
everyone will say, "Is the show starting?"

Eventually it does start, and it's a typical fireworks display: things go
boom, heavy on the patriotism. They're doing some nice things with
those packed charges that explode in an asymmetric pattern, like a
ring or a heart or a smiley face, but they still haven't figured out how
to make them go off the right way up.

And afterwards, it's a typical post-fireworks-display traffic jam:
everybody leaps onto the road, and the traffic precipitates into a
solid. But here in America, there's an added element: the fire trucks.
Every now and then, a fire engine, lights blazing, sirens blaring, will
try and force its way through the solid traffic, to get to yet another
clueless individual who has set fire to the desert scrub or to their
vehicle.

Don't get me wrong: it's fun to have access to things that go boom;
but it would also be nice if there was some sort of cluefulness test
that people had to pass before being allowed to buy this stuff. Here
is a proposed test: